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Our Two Cents, Which We Shouldn't Have to Pay, Anyway, Because the Net Should be Free
by Michael Gallant

Lately, the battle between the forces of free expression and corporate profits, which has been raging for years, has heated up to the point where we feel it necessary to sink our pint, pick up our barstool and wade into the fray. Not because we feel we can bring fresh ideas or raise the level of the debate, but because listening to it makes us want to bust some heads.

The debate, seemingly as old as the Internet, is actually as old as any recording device. Movie theaters wailed that video rental was going to put them out of business, and the recording industry's battle against tape recorders was every bit as vicious as the current battle against downloads.

The fact that the Internet is the center of debate is just because it made theft so much easier. It made advertizing and raking in cash by the big corporations easier as well. By any rational assessment, the opportunities opened up by the new media far outweigh any loss in revenue. To top it off, simple and effective legal solutions, such as iTunes.com or buymusic.com which provide a legal, acceptable, cheap forum for purchase of music, now exist and should satisfy any sane person on either side of the issue.

The problem, however, is that most of the people arguing aren't sane. This debate isn't about finding a solution. It's about complete and total, tooth and nail, fight to the end, to the last man and the last round, holy war.

It is, unfortunately, a Philosophical struggle. It is being conducted with all the reasoned, measured approach of the Crusades, the Thirty Years War, the Cold War or the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. If what we were after was a solution, then sometime in the last fifty five years, both sides would have sat down with a map and a pencil and come up with something. No solution could have been more painful than half a century of suicide bombing and arrest by gunship. Neither side really wants a solution, because any solution would involve a retreat from their stated philosophy, and is unacceptable, as least for the hard-liners.

It is the same with the Internet debate about the freedom of content. When Orin Hatch and the RIAA are planning to enter the machines of American citizens and destroy private property without any of those trifling legal formalities that used to distinguish us from police states, we have some serious issues. A few years ago, I'd have called that illegal search and seizure, but since the Bill of Rights stopped mattering when the Supreme Court appointed our President, and talking about it became treason on September 12, 2001, I won't bother.

I don't want to focus on the broader debate, because that's been done to death. I don't want to propose a solution, because nobody really wants one, and there are plenty of solutions out there already. I want to focus on our own little chunk of the Net, the fiction zine, and lash out at everyone involved in the free vs pay, amateur vs professional, s/f vs sci-fi debate that accomplished nothing but get thick glasses steamed and vintage Manga T-shirts sprayed with rabid frothy spittle at conventions.

Since we've already written enough about how most established publishers are in need of a sensible, low carb diet and a savage beating, I will take a few swings at the other side, the readers and writers and posters to forums (-fora?). If attacking our base of support seems foolish, then at least I'm sticking to our business plan.

Back when we started up, we were a non-paying site. That was because we didn't have any cash for a start up, we didn't get any hits, and we didn't know how or even if we were going to earn anything. We were routinely flamed. How dare we tear the life's work from the poor, suffering author without throwing him a crust? Well, we were honest about the lack of payment, we didn't ask for any exclusive rights, we told everybody that despite our small size, once we published it, it was only going to be a reprint anyplace else, so they should think about it. We never deceived anybody, but we were demonized in the forums. Pretty soon, we began offering T-shirts and mugs, and even then we were attacked.

After a year, we started offering $10.00 per story. OK, we can't afford any more, because we take in next to nothing, but I stand by the fact that ten bucks is an insult. When you figure the time poured into a story, the author would be better off working at McDonalds. But the accolades poured in. We were heralded for raising up the poor, struggling author. Submissions more than tripled. The quality didn't go up a damn bit, but the volume did, so there is no validity at all to the argument that paying authors gets you better stories, just a bigger slush pile.

So, a T-shirt that cost us $12.00 to print and ship made us evil oppressors, but a check for less than a round of drinks made us the wise and generous benefactors of the next generation of writers. Ok, I can take a hint and save two bucks.

Don't get me completely wrong, I'd love to pay authors a real living wage for their stories. The pay rate isn't low so we can skim the profits form the site to make payments on the corporate jet. All the staff have alternate incomes, so in the event that we start making money, we can raise the payout.

This brings me to the other side of the argument. The same people who demand fair monetary compensation for writers recoil in horror at having to pay for the right to read. It's damn near impossible to get anybody to buy a subscription to a fiction zine, and ads are anathema to true believers in the sanctity of the Net, so sites should pay, but not make money. Even cartoonists or writers who offer a free site, but reserve a pay site for special features are derided as sellouts. What I'm hearing from all of this is that writers and artists should be paid, but by somebody else.

We even posed a solution, as unpopular as solutions are, in the Tip Cup. This kept the site free, but allowed authors to be rewarded by an adoring public, so maybe they could make more than $10.00 per story. While it works, technically at least, the biggest thing it did was prove just how unpopular solutions are. The average story receives less than $1.00 in tips.

Add to this the internecine squabbles about what amateur sites are doing to the quality of fiction, whether free stories hurt authors whose livelihood depends on their sales, and how to abbreviate Science Fiction.

The answers are obvious, absolute, and as follows: First, amateur sites are making it stronger by allowing a place for experimentation in an increasingly conservative market. Second, free stories won't hurt anybody who writes well, because we will always cough up for the next book by an author we like, unless they start to slip, which is their own damn fault. Third, it doesn't matter, you whiny fuck. Move out of your parents' basement and sleep with somebody who doesn't speak Klingon for a night and see how petty your bitching is.

Speculative Fiction should be progressive, experimental and unfettered. All this pointless debate and self important declaration of the sacred right to be paid but to read for free is just getting in the way of what actually is the only thing that matters, the only that we at QM actually care about.

The stories.

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